Improving operational efficiency has become an increasingly high priority for many businesses. In particular, the increasing cost of energy resources, such as fuel, and recent trends toward improving environmental sustainability have made reducing the consumption of energy resources essential for many businesses to maintain a competitive advantage in their respective industries. Likewise, volatile economic climates have increased competition in various industry sectors and prompted competing businesses to provide better services at a lower cost. As a result, many businesses are searching for ways to improve their operational efficiency in order to reduce costs and provide improved service to customers.
As business emphasis on operational efficiency has grown, so too has the development of technology capable of monitoring various operational characteristics. For example, businesses can use GPS (or other GNSS systems) and RFID technologies to track the location of people, vehicles, and items and generate data representative of those locations in relation to time. In addition, telematics devices are currently used in vehicles to capture information relating to various vehicle dynamics, such as fuel consumption and location.
Although such technology allows businesses to capture large amounts of operational data reflecting a variety of operational characteristics, many businesses are unable to effectively utilize such data to improve efficiencies. This problem is commonly the result of an inability to effectively translate otherwise overwhelming amounts of data into a format that is meaningful in the context of analyzing a particular efficiency. Thus, there is a need in the art for improved concepts for capturing and evaluating operational data in order to improve operational efficiencies in a variety of business contexts.
Additionally, inaccuracies in data used to plan business operations may cause additional inefficiencies. Map vendors, such as Tele Atlas® and NAVTEQ®, provide digital/electronic geographical maps to a variety of clients for different purposes. For example, map vendors may provide digital maps to (a) Internet websites for providing driving directions to consumers; (b) cellular companies to include in smartphones; (c) government agencies (e.g., the United States Department of Agriculture and Environmental Protection Agency) for use in their respective government functions; and (d) transportation and logistics companies, such as United Parcel Service of America, Inc. (UPS), for determining and optimizing delivery routes. Unfortunately, the digital maps provided by vendors are not always accurate. For example, streets may be marked as one-way streets when the street is really bi-directional. By increasing the accuracy of the digital maps, business operations based on the digital maps may be more efficient. Thus, there is also a need in the art for improving the accuracy of digital maps.